Phew. That was less of a vacation and more of a party. I need to sleep for about 28 hours to catch up. Good fun and lots of time with lifelong friends and family.
Photo: Lake Norman, NC, where I spent a lot of my childhood.
Sachi and I take our time off quite seriously and I was very inspired by a couple of posts by Hillel at Jackson Fish. It looks like they have a philosophy similar to ours regarding time away from work.
I don’t want to wait until I’m in my fifties, sixties, to spend extended time with my family, doing what i want, travelling the world, etc. To me the time to have those experiences is now. This is not a statement that having those experiences later in life is without value. It’s more that I don’t know why I should have to wait. I want to have those experiences now and later.
Hell yeah.
Hillel also talks about not spending his life working towards a big flip or IPO. His thoughts also remind me of another Seattle company, the Robot Coop, who set out from the very beginning to create jobs that they loved. They could have sold out long ago, but they're not interested - they have wonderful, sustainable jobs.
On the plane home yeaterday, Sachi and I were talking about the future of Common Craft and agreed that we're not focused on creating a widly successful business that may one day enable us to retire. More than anything, we want to create a wildly successful lifestyle for today - a lifestyle that includes hard work, regular income, independence and plenty of time to do what we want to do, when we want to do it (and that includes our work). Sure, one day we'll retire, but we're not going to trade our health and lifestyle today for a trip to Aruba tomorrow.
Thanks for the link Nancy.